‘The Bachelorette’ Recap: Sex in Thailand

This week, the action picks right back up at the Airplane Hangar of Heartbreak. JoJo's still sobbing all over the place after Luke has told her he loves her, but she finally strides back to the four remaining men and sends Luke packing…to be the next Bachelor, right? He’s SO gonna be the next Bachelor. It will further his country music career! Luke looks genuinely shocked to be eliminated; I guess I’m surprised too.

"I started to struggle with not knowing where you stood," JoJo, who seems more like a giant vacuum of insecurity with each episode, tells him. Luke is confounded as she mumbles about “following my heart, my gut,” through her barrage of sobs and sniffles. He stays stoic and peaces out in the limo, still grappling with his elimination.

And now it's off to Thailand. JoJo says of cutting Luke, “I was scared going to bed that night, not really being sure if I made a mistake.” Fun Bachelorette game: Count how many times JoJo says she’s “scared” throughout each episode. She says it constantly! Taken at face value, it’s as if her experience on the show has been a waking nightmare full of horrifying emotions and uncertainties. JoJo lives in constant terror, shaking and crying at the very prospect of being disappointed in love again.

JoJo meets up with Robby in Thailand, and it’s all very passionate, because Robby tells us so. He V.O.s that his allegedly terrible ex is HAUNTING him and his family, and hopes JoJo isn’t too weirded out by it. Over Thai foot massages, they reflect on how great their Hometown Date was, and how he was the first contestant to say he loved her way back in Uruguay.

“I’m head over heels for Joelle,” Robby says in a voice-over. Huh? When did he start calling her Joelle all the time?

At dinner, JoJo says her own Fantasy Suite experience with Bachelor Ben makes her even more hesitant about the evening: “When Robby tells me he loves me, it does make it a little harder to trust what he’s feeling.” I don’t see the corollary here; Robby told her he loved her weeks ago, not tonight just to get some sex. Also, she cut Luke for not telling her he loved her, but now she’s holding Robby’s admission against him?

Digging for reassurance, JoJo presses him on his family’s opinions of her. Robby says they’re 100% pro-JoJo and claims he FOUND a perfectly-worded letter from his father encouraging him about the situation. This crop of contestants had such sensitive dads! They loud-smoochy kiss, she gives him the card and the Fantasy Suite is AWN. Robby is still calling her “Joelle” in the V.O. and between that and his eager shiny-foreheaded “yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahs” at her Fantasy Suite invite, he’s creeping me out a tiny bit.

“I’ve always wanted my own love story, I’ve always wanted to feel so special and so wanted and so loved,” JoJo tells the camera, and I feel like the show is really telegraphing that Robby's the future winner. We see them looking blissful the morning after.

Next, JoJo meets Jordan for an endorphins-raising hike through the jungle, and Jordan says he loves how she “rolls with the punches.” They happen upon and/or the producers lead them to a sex cave—oh sorry, it actually has a beautiful Buddhist temple in it. I was sacrilegious just then.

“I feel like JoJo and I have been writing our love story this whole time,” says Jordan who, like JoJo, speaks in canned sounding, wedding video-ready quotes.

In the cave, he says “the last box to check” was meeting his family, because he didn't consider that he has yet to meet her family, who are apparently on their way there. JoJo tells him all about them; Jordan says lots of stuff about wanting to impress her dad. JoJo wonders in a voice-over whether Jordan’s too good to be true.

“It SCARES me a lot to think that I could possibly have my heart broken,” our constantly petrified heroine confesses.

JoJo asks Jordan what his next year looks like, and when he can’t answer, she says “that makes me nervous.” She worries that his “lifestyle” would make their relationship long distance, and then — as she did with Robby — she holds the fact that Jordan told her he loved her against him. Maybe it’s JoJo, not Robby, who hasn’t healed from a soured relationship (with Ben)?

Jordan assures her that he’s never felt this way before, and she tosses him the Fantasy Suite card. The next morning, Jordan says they took a “big step last night” (heh) and that it was “exactly everything I needed” (not like that!). JoJo V.O.s, “it’s scary to think that I’m in love with two people right now. “ She worries that her date with Chase will make her in love with THREE men, which yes, she also deems “scary.”

Next, JoJo and Chase go to the market and play with some dead fish.

They go on a boat ride in the sweltering heat; a monkey pops out to say hi. JoJo says spending time with Chase is so "joyful," and since this is an actual desirable quality in a life partner this is when I know she'll send Chase home.

“Everything about her is so unstoppable,” Chase tells the camera, with light in his previously-dead eyes. I try to warn him from my couch, and the monkey probably tries to warn him nonverbally, but it's no use.

On the beach, Chase said the Hometown Dates and this whole process has made him “more open.” That’s nice, if it’s the unscripted truth. Good for Chase! They toast beers and go swimming, and she says, YET AGAIN, that her growing attachment "scares" her.

Later that day, Robby stops by her apartment unannounced. Huh? He tells her he can’t stop thinking and dreaming of her, and while I find it borderline too-intense, of course JoJo thinks it’s really sweet.

JoJo gives Chase the Fantasy Suite card, and they take it back to the hotel room for a champagne toast. While Robby and Jordan’s time was left mysterious with the door closing in the camera’s face, production has followed them into the room here. Red flag!

Chase tells her he loves her, which he says he’s never said to anyone first before (!?!?!). JoJo — who keeps tragically mistaking “butterflies” for love — freaks out and runs away, because Chase is a stable guy with an actual job instead of a walking set of veneers, and doesn’t radiate narcissism in waves. She leaves him hanging in there as she wrings her hands, just thinkin’ bout Chase on the chaise.

“I don’t know if I’m in the same place as you,” she returns to tell him. That is certainly true.

Chase is pissed. “That was f---ing terrifying to say,” he says. “You didn’t give it a chance. What was missing?”

Maybe JoJo’s really listening to her (terrible) gut instincts, or maybe she’s convinced she already loves two men and can’t handle a third complication. The light that, for once, flickered in Chase’s eyes has been extinguished; he storms out. Soon she’s chasing Chase to…why? Make him not mad at her by crying some more?

“That sucked,” he declares after he’s departed in the van. “That’s like pulling down your pants to get kicked in the balls!”

The next morning, after brief, contractually-obligatory conferences with Chris Harrison, JoJo Jordan and Robby meet in a courtyard garden. Just as she’s saying that she sent Chase home, Chase descends down a staircase to whisk her away by the hand. But — at the producer’s urging or not — he just came to apologize. After some more freestyle weeping, JoJo strides back for the rose ceremony for the two walking sets of veneers she already picked. Sigh.